)-;r THE Å _...! / - rll :: tI. . l ; ----- r II" :: ::::: . -'0 .\.. 'II / oç . / ;.'-, V 1', " 1,' / rm / \ \ \ . I \ . '" . o "'. ". THE TALK OF THE TOWN COMMENT RECOUNTED OUT I s it O.K. to talk about the recount yet? It wasn't the right time on Septem- ber 10th, because the University of Chi- cago's National Opinion Research Cen- ter had oilly just finished organizing the data gleaned horn its meticulous exami- nation of a hundred and seventy-five thousand uncounted Florida ballots. It wasn't on September 12th, because the news organizations that had commis- sioned the study were otherwise occu- pied. It was the right time on Novem- ber 12th, apparently: that was the day the news organizations got around to publishing their analyses of the results. But, judging horn the lack of discussion that has ensued, it abruptly became the wrong time again on November 13th. Maybe it'll never be the right time. But what the hell. Let's talk about it anywa The first thing to say about the me- dia recount (its formal name was the Florida Ballots Project) is that it was a :::: praiseworthy endeavor-well designed, w 5 unbiased, thorough, and public spir- ; ited. The consortium of news organi- e zations-its eight members were the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall StreetJouma4 the Tribune Com- !<i: pan the Palm Beach Post, the St. Pe- tersburg Times, CNN, and the Associ- ated Press-did something admirable. The second thing to say is that the courage that spurred the consortium into existence, a year ago, flagged at the end. Given that the consortium's goal was to catalogue all, or as many as possible, of the votes that had been cast by Florida citi- zens but not recorded by Florida authori- ties, one might have expected its members to emphasize the finding that corre- sponded to its goal. That finding, it turned out, was that, no matter what standard or combination of standards is applied, AI Gore got a handfiù more votes than George W. Bush. Faced with this con- clusion, the consortium changed the question to who would have won if the original statewide recount had not been aborted. The reassuring answer to that question, again by a handfiù, was Bush. It soon developed, however, that the news organizations had missed a crucial -t'\ , \ " \ detail: if the recount ordered by the Flor- ida Supreme Court had in fact gone for- ward, the årcuit judge supervising it, Terry Lewis, probably would have directed the counting not oilly of "undervotes" (on which machines could detect no vote) but also of "overvotes" (on which machines detected markings for more than one candidate). The overvotes, according to the consortium's own numbers, would have yielded a hair-breadth victory for Gore. This news was uncovered by the Orlando Sentinel (which got its scoop the old-fashioned way: a reporter picked up the phone and called the fellow) and by Michael Isiko:ff; of Newsweek, who found a contemporaneous memo horn Lewis confirming what he told the Sentinel In any case, there is no longer any doubt that more Florida voters intended to vote for Gore than for Bush: accord- ing to the Times, some eight thousand Gore overvotes, net, were lost because of bad design (the notorious "butterfly" of Palm Beach) or confusing instructions (the two-page Duval County "caterpil- lar" ballot, which directed voters to "vote all pages"). But those votes were irre- deemably spoiled, and the consortium did not consider them. In tenns of those votes that were arguably valid, Florida- still-is too close to call. In every sce- nario, the margins are smaller than the five hundred and thirty-seven votes by which Bush officially prevailed-and smaller, too, than the margin of error. We do kno without question, that the losing candidate outpolled the win- ning one in the nation at large. In mod- THE NEW YOR.KER, DECEMBER. 24 & 31, 2001 41